A medicine dispensing and packing apparatus or the like includes a medicine supply apparatus that can subdivide and supply medicines such as pills. For example, a medicine supply apparatus provided in a “medicine packing apparatus” is described in Patent Document 1.
The medicine supply apparatus is referred to as a “pill supply unit” in Patent Document 1. The pill supply unit is provided on an upper surface of the medicine packing apparatus, and includes a pill housing portion having a plurality of pill housing boxes in a matrix. An operator such as a pharmacist manually dispenses and supplies pills into the pill housing portion. At this time, a pill for one package is supplied into each of the pill housing boxes.
A pill ejection portion is provided below the pill housing box (inside the apparatus). The pill ejection portion can automatically take out (eject) the pill supplied into the pill housing box as described above and supply the pill into a packing unit in the apparatus.
In the medicine packing apparatus described in Patent Document 1, the pill supply unit is secured to a body of the apparatus. As described above, the pill supply unit is provided on the upper surface of the medicine packing apparatus. Thus, if the operator is short, he/she has to considerably extend his/her arm to supply pills into the pill housing boxes close to a back side, which may cause difficulty in operation. This is particularly noticeable for a large medicine packing apparatus in which many pill housing boxes are arranged in a depth direction.
Thus, the present inventor has found a structure in which a part of a medicine supply apparatus can be drawn toward a front side (a side on which an operator stands). More specifically, this structure is such that a top tablet cassette unit (hereinafter referred to as a “cassette unit”) corresponding to the “pill housing portion” in Patent Document 1 can be drawn from a body of a medicine packing apparatus. This reduces a distance between the operator and the cassette unit, and facilitates an operation even for a short operator.